Enter Into the Joy of Your Master--Philippians 1:3-11

How many of you would say that English was or is one of your favorite subjects in school? For those of you who raised your hands, how many of you would say that diagramming sentences was one of your favorite parts of English class? I, for one, really enjoy things like that. You’ll discover that I have a real strong streak of nerdy-ness that comes out every so often, and this is probably one of the ways that it manifests itself the most. I enjoy language and learning about how language works and how it helps us express our ideas to each other through words.
Words can be such funny things sometimes. It’s funny how small changes to a word or to word order can give us a totally different meaning in what we’re trying to say. For example, most of us wouldn’t mind being called a pleasant person. That’s a nice compliment—it means that we’re nice to be around; other people enjoy our company. But what if we change each of those words just slightly and flip the order around so that instead of being called a “pleasant person,” we’re being called a “people pleaser.” That’s a much different meaning, isn’t it? All of a sudden we’ve changed from a nice compliment to an insult! We’re not expressing kind thoughts when we call someone a people pleaser. What we’re saying is that that person just tells people what they want to hear, they never want to upset anyone or disagree with anyone.
But what if we make a slight change to that phrase again? What if take out the word “people” and insert the word “God,” so that now we’re calling someone a “God-pleaser” rather than a people pleaser? That’s much different; now we’re back to a positive idea again. The thought that we could be pleasing to God is an incredible thought. God is so great and powerful—does he actually pay attention to us, and could he actually feel joy over the things we do?
This morning we are going to learn that we can in fact be “God-pleasers.” God is at work in us and he is pleased when we cooperate with him and follow his will. The one thought that I don’t want you to miss today is this:

God is delighted when we work to spread the gospel, and He will work to help us press forward together in love until Christ’s return.

Would you turn with me please to Philippians 1:3–11? Follow along with me as I read these verses [READ 1:3–11]. Let’s look at three aspects of God’s work in us.

I. God is delighted when we work to spread the gospel, and He will work to help us continue (1:3–6)
In vv. 3–6, Paul expresses his thanksgiving and joy for the Philippians work to spread the gospel, and when he talks about his joy, he’s undoubtedly expressing God’s perspective toward them as well. Let’s read these verses again [READ vv. 3–6]. As I mentioned last week, this is a very warm and friendly letter from the apostle Paul, and we can see that right here. He writes about his thankfulness for them and his joy over them because of what he calls their “participation in the gospel.” Paul probably had several ideas in mind here. He’s probably thinking about the blessings that they had received by accepting Christ after hearing the message of the gospel, but he is probably also thinking about their efforts to spread the gospel that had become a blessing to them. It seems that the Philippians were seeking to be faithful to spread the gospel to the people directly around them, and they were also financially supporting the apostle Paul to help him in his missionary ministry. So they had received the blessings of the gospel, and now they were focused on helping other people receive those blessings.
So the Philippians’ faithfulness was a source of thanksgiving and joy for Paul, even though he was locked up in prison. Undoubtedly this was because he recognized their faithfulness as the work of God in their lives. Paul may have been confined at the moment, but God was not, and God was continuing the work in the Philippians that had begun with the apostle Paul’s preaching to them. In v. 6 we have this beautiful and very familiar statement [READ v. 6]. Grammatically, this is tied-in to Paul’s thankfulness in v. 3—he is thankful because he is confident that God’s work will continue. But don’t overlook where Paul’s confidence is placed—he says, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it…” His confidence was in God, that God would continue his work in the Philippians, and this confidence became a source of thanksgiving and joy.
I can attest that it is a source of joy for every minister when we see God at work in the lives of our people. When we see our people respond in faithfulness and obedience, it is extremely rewarding. But you know, I think the Bible tells us that your obedience isn’t just a source of joy for me—it’s a source of joy for God as well. Apparently, God is emotionally invested in our decisions, so that we cause him grief when we sin, and we cause him joy when we obey.
Let’s look at a couple of passages on God’s joy over our obedience. Turn with me please to Zephaniah 3:12. Now before v. 12, God is describing the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. They had rebelled against him, and as a result he was going to judge them and purify them. So then notice what he says in the next few verses, beginning in v. 12 [READ vv. 12–17] What a beautiful picture of God’s joy over the faithfulness of his people! Does this look like a God who is distant from us, or who is unconcerned about the things we do? Not at all! God is overjoyed when we respond to his work in our lives in the right way. We can think of the parable of the talents, where the master tells the faithful slave to “enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). Or we can think of the parable of the prodigal son, when the father runs to meet his wayward child who has come home.
What significance this gives to the choices that we make every day! Our choices don’t simply impact ourselves or other human beings, but they impact God as well. He is grieved when we sin, but he rejoices when we obey. That should be a strong incentive for us to do what is right.

So I believe God was rejoicing over the Philippians’ obedience, and Paul shared that joy and expressed it to them here in his letter. And then I think Paul expressed another aspect of God’s work in us…

II. Our work to spread the gospel should draw us together in sincere affection (1:7–8)
We see Paul’s deep affection for the Philippians coming through again in vv. 7–8, but he tells us here that his affection for them is not his alone. Let’s read these verses again [READ vv. 7–8]. Paul’s words here are a great testimony as to how our work to spread the gospel should draw us together in sincere affection. In v. 7, it seems that Paul is saying that the Philippians had been with him through thick and thin—they remembered him in his imprisonment by sending a visitor to him with a financial gift, and they stood with him in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, which apparently was earning them some opposition from others, as we’ll see at the end of chapter one.
All of this had forged a deep affection between Paul and the Philippians, and in v. 8 Paul says that his affection for them is not his alone. He calls it “the affection of Christ Jesus.” I think he is reminding us here that our connections with one another as Christians are based on our mutual connection to Jesus Christ. Paul and the Philippians were drawn together in affection for one another through their mutual tie as partakers of the grace of God.
I believe these verses provide a beautiful example for us of the unity that can be found in Christ. One of the sad realities among Christians today is that we seem to lack this kind of unity. I sometimes wonder if that’s why Jesus prayed for our unity in John 17. That chapter records Jesus praying on the night before he was crucified, and one of the requests that he made was that we would be unified. But today it seems like we divide over the silliest things, and the only thing we can seem to agree upon is that we should all fight for our personal preferences to the bitter end.
We need to strive for the unity that Paul describes here, and I think he tells us how to do that—we must have an affection for each other that is based in our mutual tie to Jesus Christ. We must remember that we all are in need of God’s grace. We are all sinners, we are all hopeless without Christ, but in him we are all brothers and sisters, united by our adoption as children of God. So when we find that we disagree with another Christian, we must remember first and foremost that God loves that person as his own child, so we should too. Any fight between born-again Christians is a family feud, and we don’t want to bring that kind of dishonor upon God’s family.

Now part of remaining united as believers is growing in Christian love. This brings us to the third aspect of God’s work in us…

III. Our love should grow in knowledge so that we’ll know what’s best as we live for Christ’s return (1:9–11)
In v. 3, Paul had written that he thanked God for the Philippians when he prayed for them, and now in vv. 9–11 he describes his prayer request for them [READ vv. 9–11]. Now we need to spend a moment looking at what Paul says about love, because its very different from how we think about love today. He writes, “I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.” Here he ties love into knowledge and discernment, which are clearly mental or cognitive activities. But in our culture today we tend to see love as purely an emotional thing, and this leads us to all sorts of false ideas about love.
We have wrong ideas today about romantic love. Perhaps you’ve heard the famous quote from the 1970 film “Love Story” that says, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Wrong!! Do not pass go…do not collect two hundred dollars! Repentance and confession of sin against each other is a HEALTHY part of a romantic relationship.
We also have wrong ideas today about love between friends. We tend to believe that if I love my friend, I won’t confront him or challenge him about anything. But Proverbs 27:5 says, “Better is open rebuke than love that is concealed.” The idea of that verse is that it is better to correct our friends when they need than to hide our love from them by saying nothing.
We also have wrong ideas about parental love when we act like our children can do no wrong or we refuse to discipline them. But again the book of Proverbs says in Proverbs 13:24, “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”
According to Paul, our love for one another should be expressed in the context of real knowledge and all discernment. I think he is undoubtedly talking about an intimate knowledge of God. His words seem to be an echo of Proverbs 1:7, which says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The fear of the Lord is a frame of mind toward God that causes us to have a deep respect for him and a strong desire to please him. And the idea of “discernment” that Paul mentions in v. 9 is the ability to correctly apply our knowledge to our everyday decisions.
So Paul is saying that our love for one another needs to be expressed through a knowledge of what pleases God that will help us make the right decisions. And according to v. 10, the purpose of all of this is “so that you may approve the things that are excellent.” The New Living Translation says, “for I want you to understand what really matters,” and I think that captures the idea well. A knowledgeable love for one another will help us determine what really matters, and then we can pursue those things accordingly. I think this statement anticipates a couple of things that we find later in this letter. First, in chapter three, Paul writes about how he used to take such pride in all of the legalistic standards that he met in his life. By all of the standards of the Jewish people of his day, Paul was perfect, but he says that after he was converted he found all of those things to be worthless when compared to the value of an intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ. A relationship with Jesus is what really mattered, and Paul wanted the Philippians to remember that especially in light of a group that may have been trying to establish legalistic standards in their church.
The second thing that Paul may have been anticipating is in chapter four, where he addressed two women who apparently were at odds with each other. Euodia and Syntyche were apparently fighting about something, and perhaps Paul felt that their disagreement was based on something that didn’t really matter, and so Paul prays for them to express their love in a knowledgeable way so they could focus on the things that really did matter. That is such a key for keeping peace within a church. So many of the things that can divide members of a church really don’t matter, and so by focusing on the things that really DO matter, we can enjoy the unity that God wants us to have.
The result of all of this is found in the last part of v. 10 and into v. 11. We are to express our love for one another in a knowledgeable way “in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” When we express our love in accordance with what pleases God, we will bear the fruit of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in turn will make us ready for the day that he returns. Paul says that we will be “sincere” and “blameless.” Now blameless does not mean sinless; it means that no one can raise an objection against the way that you live. It means that you live for Christ, and when you do fail, you confess your sin and ask forgiveness and make restitution when its necessary. And the ultimate result, of course, will be that God receives glory and praise from the spiritual fruit that is in our lives.

So as we see, friends, we can not only bring praise and glory to God through our actions, but we can bring him joy as well. God is delighted when we work to spread the gospel, and He will work to help us press forward together in love until Christ’s return.
I hope that Paul’s prayer for the Philippians will be our prayer both for others and for ourselves. And we can be assured that God will be pleased as we live out our love in a knowledgeable and continue the work that he has started in us.